A Gray Day

    Really getting tired of these early morning field trips. A new batch of perky Vietnamese students who started in on their usual questions right away. "Can you count to ten in Vietnamese?? Can I take picture?? Can I have your Facebook?? Have you eaten any Vietnamese food yet??" It would be nice if they had different questions every once in a while. We visited the Ethnology museum which was very museum like. On the inside. There was a huge park filled with various Vietnam minorities houses which were donated to the museum.The first one was huge and required us to climb a ladder/stairs hybrid to the porch. The way up was easy, the way down was difficult. The next one was a long house with another interesting ladder. Breasts are not considered sexual in most Asian cultures and that held true for this hill tribe. The long house came from a matriarchal society so the male ladder was off to the side of the porch while the women's ladder was in the middle. In case you couldn't figure this out, the female ladder had a pair of breasts on it which were somewhat helpful when getting on and off the ladder.

    Next we were subjected to a test of balance by walking across a bamboo stick with a string at one end so it shook very often and was incredibly difficult to get across. Karen and Lilith got the farthest and received Mentos as a prize. I got style points for getting my feet on the opposite side of the bamboo they were supposed to be on, almost like an anti-split.
    We were ushered back to school by the students. Had lunch with the ducklings minus Alessa. Lilith was her usual charming self while eating. It resembled the Beast during the breakfast scene from Beauty and the Beast. Actually made me forget what I was talking about mid sentence. The Winos hung out in the school hang out spot till class started. Some of us read, one used her book as a pillow and a played pinball on my iPod. Started to rain a bit but it was still nice to just sit outside. There was a dance practice going on around us which was very fun to watch.
    Forced back to Vietnamese language class. The only good thing is that we only have a few more lessons with her. She is making me really dislike Vietnam and miss Thailand more and more. She seems like a nice person but her teaching style is really hard to follow because of the high context culture that Vietnam is. She assumes too much and understands English too little.
    After returning from the school I received an angry message from my host student saying that I needed to respond to her when she messaged me. She thought that we were coming to live with our host families this Sunday and needed to know when to pick me up. However, we are going there next Friday and her supervisors were trying to schedule something with her. It has made me wary of going there in a week. Might be staying for only a few nights instead of the week I was planning to.
    Went out for dinner and ice cream with Donna. Almost went for a walk around the lake but we decided against it. Our exercise was to cross the busiest street by us multiple times. The people here automatically assume every foreigner here is American or speaks English. They call out "Hello!" when we pass by. So I am pretending to be a French tourist and not understand hello. So far it hasn't worked.
    Just received some bad news. The people I thought I might live with next year asked someone else to live with them. This ruins my plans for next year and leaves me in an awkward homeless position. Plus it's 2 AM and Donna just got off the phone with her brother after an hour long call. I really wanted to yell at her or throw her phone out the window.
    Not been the best day of the trip for sure. Hopefully tomorrow will be better since we'll be on a lake for our first weekend trip here. There won't be a post tomorrow but there will be one Sunday for sure. Hopefully with pictures, I can't find someplace here that sells batteries.

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